Brussels, 22/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - In the face of the challenges of road and sky congestion, accidents, the EU's dependence on the outside world for its energy supply, and terrorism, the European Commission Vice-President (responsible for energy and transport), Loyola de Palacio, chose safety as top priority for the first annual conference of the Commission's Directorate-General for Transport and Energy, that opened in Barcelona on 18 October. Addressing the conference, Ms Loyola de Palacio listed a series of key demands which had to be juggled politically in order to guarantee safety, namely developing a political approach to preventative risk management along with targets to be met; implementing a regulatory framework for competition; ensuring the application of these rules is managed, monitored and checked by an independent body; basing the guarantee of continuous high quality services on a high-performance European infrastructure network; and harnessing technological innovation to increase safety.